Soup

Pictured above is an example of a simple week night dinner in our family. Pan fried porkchops, stewed potatoes and some oven roasted veggies, in this case zucchini and asparagus. This particular plate was made by my Grandma Mary, who is an amazing cook, but notoriously didn't know how to cook until after she got married. Her food is always full of love and flavor, and are usually simple yet filling and balanced meals.

This is the kind of food my momma grew up on and the kind of food I grew up eating as a kid, along with things like Hamburger Helper, Shake and Bake, and the ever reliable rotisserie chicken and whatever sides she served with it. This cheat code has served me well quite often. In this case I served some chicken with roasted brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes. 

 As a single mother her goal wasn't to dazzle her family, it was to quickly give us something hot and substantial, but she only had a certain amount of time in the day available for food prep. This is where my brother and I come into the picture. The next step in my training as an amateur chef was helping prepare simple week night dinners for my family on occasions where momma had to work late or be out of town for work.

This article discusses how children of single parents and children of divorce often have to take on extra responsibilities, and how this can sometimes have deleterious effects on a child's personal and emotional development in certain cases. In this article there is a reference to how some parents have to give their children "the speech" about how the kids will need to take on some extra responsibilities as well. 

In our family, however, I don't remember having any such speech. While my brother was effectively the man of the house helping to keep me in line and take care of the house, I was the baby of the family and was given different responsibilities, like cooking.  Our family worked as a team to support each other, including us kids. My brother and I understood that we were just doing our part to maintain our household. 

I am so grateful for these experiences. Helping prepare meals for my family from an early age instilled in me a great deal of pride in the food I prepared, and an appreciation for the simple and elegant art of throwing something together. 

If I remember correctly, I made this soup from a few carrots, stalks of celery, and stock that was in the fridge leftover from a different meal. A box of ditalini pasta, a can of tomatoes, and a little bit of parmesan cheese transformed those leftovers into a brand-new meal that represents a core tenant of Native culture: Waste Nothing!